ThePlanet.com Popularity Grew ~200%

Successful online business depends on website load time and availability. Website uptime and performance monitoring reveals end user experience with the websites; the later factors to the server performance (other reasons apply as well). Therefore, quality of hosting services are important while choosing an ISP.

ISP ranking based on real time http monitoring results of hosted websites and web applications was discussed early this year in Best Hosting Providers in 2007: Mon.itor.Us Statistics. Ranking criteria were uptime, performance and popularity. Among the three, popularity is considered of greater importance, since it also shows reliability and higher customer satisfaction.

Below is the table of 20 popular service providers shown in the post above. ThePlanet.com is number 2 with 979 active tests on Mon.itor.Us.



More into popularity aspect another post was published about ISP migrations, where among top 20 migrations ThePlanet.com received highest number of migrations (176 new tests moved from Everyone Internet, Net Access Corporation, PoundHost Internet Services and FortressITX to ThePlanet.com).


Mon.itor.Us October statistics brings another insight into ISP popularity. ThePlanet.com shows almost 200% growth in number of tests monitored (1838 tests now!), followed by New Dream Network (80%) and GoDaddy (65%). Eveyone Internet experienced a slight decrease (-15%), while Layered Technology, Net Access Corporation, Media Temple, HostDime.com, Hostdepartment.com are no longer in the top 20.



Interesting to observe that popular ISPs also show reliable performance according to monitoring results from Europe and US.

Is Cheap Hosting Really Cheap?

Web site uptime is a very important aspect of improving companies' bottom line.

Internet usage increases and bandwidth is becoming an important issue because of the high load on the infrastructure. Having a fast loading website will be more and more imperative to be successful in the market. Financial gains and sustainability of the web services depend on web customer experience in the first place.

Hosting becomes a commodity

Many try to decrease hosting budgets. Scary Truth about Cheap Hosting and the Hidden Costs you Never Know Until its too Late says cheap hosting budget typically ranges from $2.75-$3.50. But how much the does "cheap" really cost? According to the post above the possibility of getting low customer satisfactions increases because of slow services.
Cheap hosting services result in:

• 
  
1. Increased Website Downtime
2. Poor Server Response
3. Very Attractive To Spammers
4. Susceptible To Search Engine Ban
5. Lack of Customer Support
6. Fly-By-Night Risk
7. Exposure To Infections (Viruses, Trojans etc.)
• 
  

Loosing customer loyalty

Deteriorated Web visitors' experience is highly negative on business bottom line. How many times is it possible to impact a customer and make the first positive impression? With the speed at which internet and businesses evolve, slow page load time and downtime is equivalent to:

• Lost sales
• Decrease web popularity and SERPs ranking
• Increase pay per click cost

How one would know to reduce the load time?

Proactive website monitoring from different geographic locations shows the record of web site load time and performance to start with before making efforts to correct the problem. It will measure end users experience and alert you in case of problems.

September 2008 ISP Ranking

Mon.itor.Us network provides statistics to analyze Hosting companies' performance from Europe and the USA, based on more than 130,000 web sites (http tests) and 20 million checks per month. Tables below represent the hosting companies with 99% uptime in September 2008. Response times are in the 3rd column. The data is derived from real time monitoring of the web sites hosted on their servers. Number of sites shown in the last column.

Click on images to enlarge.

Thus choosing a reliable and high performance hosting provider is cost saving. Cheap is not always economical.

ThePlanet.com Lost 54, Received 176 Tests from 20 selected

According to Mon.itor.Us network among 20 highest number of test migrations, 54 tests formerly hosted on ThePlanet.com moved to other hosts, while 176 tests from other ISPs now are with ThePlanet.com.

This table shows how many tests moved from one ISP to another, according to Mon.itor.Us monitoring data during 6 months. We took 20 highest number of test migrations.